Random Magic

(Alistair) Anyway, on with the point! As you may have gathered from the forgoing, Random Magic is a book I received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

Now, just to put the below into some form of context, as long-time readers and those who know me personally will be aware, I am something of a connoisseur of eccentricity. As is, after all, appropriate for someone who spends most of their time at 90 degrees plus or minus 17 from the mainstream - as the saying goes, "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that."

Thus, I was pretty convinced that I was going to like this book as soon as it arrived, and I opened the box. Now, the author has asked us show more Early Reviewers not to go around inventorying the packaging or its contents, so as not to give away the quirky little surprises contained therein - which request I shall, of course, honor, as I have no desire at all to spoil the experience of any of my fellow reviewers who may not have got to it yet - but I don't think I'll be doing that just by noting its existence. And to congratulate the writer on finding a clever way to hook my attention and predispose me to liking the work!

Not, I hasten to add, that I required any particular predisposition. For such a connoisseur of eccentricity, this book is just about perfect. There is a sweet spot, I think, positioned about halfway between the sublime and the ridiculous, between madcap surreality (and, well, the eponymous randomness) and underlying pattern, off of which it is really very easy to fall when attempting to write a book like this.

Fortunately for us, Sasha Soren nails it exactly.

Plot-wise, well, I leave you with the blurb:

When absent-minded Professor Random misplaces the main character from Alice in Wonderland, young Henry Witherspoon must book-jump to fetch Alice before chaos theory kicks in and the world vanishes. Along the way he meets Winnie Flapjack, a wit-cracking doodle witch with nothing to her name but a magic feather and a plan. Such as it is. Henry and Winnie brave the Dark Queen, whatwolves, pirates, Struths, and fluttersmoths, Priscilla and Charybdis, obnoxiously cheerful vampires, Baron Samedi, a nine-dimensional cat, and one perpetually inebriated Muse to rescue Alice and save the world by tea time.

And I shall not attempt to describe it further, partly because doing so would again be spoilerful, and partly because, well, to do so in more detail than the above would require far more explanation than this review, or indeed this review's margin, can reasonably contain.

And in any case, as ripping as the plot surely is, it is the execution of it where this book really shines. The author's dry, witty, and quirkily clever writing style is a perfect match for the plot and the setting, and the main characters (the initially out-of-his-depth Henry - who develops marvellously as a character throughout the book - and the clever, never-say-die Winnie) keep you moving on through the book. Indeed, I lost more than a few hours of sleep due to having to read Just! One! More! Chapter! (Kept my lovely wife awake occasionally due to uncontrollable laughter, too - this may be worth bearing in mind if you usually read books in bed.)

(As a side note, I should also like to mention just how refreshing I find it to read a book in which the author feels free to drop allusions - or, really, avalanche allusions! - to all kinds of things, from classical mythology to more recent folklore, without feeling the need to hammer them home, explain them, or in other wise treat the reader as if the entirety of human culture before, say, 1980 could reasonably be expected to be a closed book. Give me a book that assumes I have a clue, any day!)

To sum up: I have no hesitation in recommending this book superlatively. It's a charming and absolute delight to read. If you take me up on this recommendation, and don't subsequently enjoy it, you may want to check that you haven't died somewhere along the line and not noticed. Or at least fossilized, anyway.

( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/cerebrate/2009/10/random_magic_sasha_soren.ht... ) show less

This book is so witty and... well, charming.

I'll get to the downside first, to get that out of the way. I found the book to start and end a bit disjointed- don't get me wrong, most of the book is random and disjointed in a good way, but I just found the beginning and end to be a bit slow and disconnected; I think I would have preferred it if the book stayed more with the two main characters. I wanted to know more about them; I'm thinking because Soren did such a good job making them interesting! :) The only other slight problem I had with the book was a personal preference- at one point near the beginning the main characters visit vampires, and I think by now everyone knows my opinion about undead (needless to say, I skimmed a lot of show more those pages. Ugh, vampires are overrated so don't do it for me). I'll give Soren credit, though; she made those particular undead unique enough that I didn't flat out skip those pages like I would have otherwise. To this author's credit, I think the other reason I kept reading those pages was because man, she can write! Even when it was a subject I wasn't interested in, I kept at it because the book was so enjoyable.

Anyway, to get on with the review, I found the rest of this book to be charming, interesting, and well-written. The author definitely has the skill to write something you don't want to put down (I don't think I put this book down the entire time I was reading it; I wanted to know what happened next!) and the creativity to write something utterly unique. The writing was witty and I loved all the random references throughout. The two main characters were great- Winnie is spunky, intelligent, and clever, and Henry is ... Henry. He's lovably kind of stupid oblivious, but he gets a lot of character development, so even though he's kind of pathetic, you don't mind and keep cheering him on.

I'm not going to go into details about the plot because I feel that spoils things, but I will say that the plot is engaging and fun and the cast of characters are just as well-written as the rest of the book (don't let my hatred of vampires stop you from reading this, please! In fact, feel free to ignore that part of my review as just one of my personal quirks). I've always been a fan of Alice in Wonderland, so I thought it was so neat that this story had that as a basis. The book also had mythological references and literary figures; I had to grin because those are two of my favorite things. This story isn't all a happy romp, of course, but that makes it even more interesting to see the characters' struggles and how they develop from them. Overall, though, this book is fun!

I will heartily recommend this book to anyone looking to read something new and entertaining; it's got friendship, love, strength, wit, adventure, magic, and a red feather. You can't go wrong with those things! I think it's a young adult book, but adults will love it, too. I know I did, and I suppose I count as an adult. ;) I'll give this 4 1/2 out of 5 stars. show less

This is a comedic fantasy adventure novel I got through the Early Reviewers program. And, man... There were moments when it struck me as very charming and funny and pleasantly eccentric. Unfortunately, the rest of the time it just seemed to be trying far too hard, and consequently missing the mark. I sort of felt as if it were jumping around, waving its metaphorical hands in my face and shouting, "Look! Look how clever and whimsical and full of madcap adventures I am! Look how many literary allusions I can manage! Look how many bad puns! Look how much cheerful nonsense I can get into one sentence! Don't you just love me? STOP NITPICKING AND LOVE ME!" At least, it does that until a little over halfway through the book, at which point it show more suddenly takes a turn for the much darker and more serious and emotional and philosophical for a while, and that, too, is pretty overwrought and only intermittently effective.

I admit, my response here may be somewhat biased by the realization, before I started reading, that the author is apparently also the publisher. (And, judging by the four-page letter and the extravagant "goodies" that came with the book, its overzealous marketer, as well.) I naturally tend to be leery of self-published works; I read enough amateur writing on the internet to understand all too well what the lack of a vetting process or any editorial oversight can lead to in terms of quality. But, regardless of whether the thought comes courtesy of my preconceptions or not, my strong feeling about this is that it could be a highly entertaining novel, if re-written a few years down the road by an author who'd spent the intervening time developing a more mature and less self-indulgent style.

Actually, out of curiosity, I looked up the author's bio on her webpage, and was surprised for a moment to read the assertion that she had ten years of writing experience... until I realized that that was experience with screenplays. And then suddenly it all made sense. Because many times while I was reading this book, it occurred to me that I might enjoy it a great deal more if it were translated onto a movie screen. Even the often incredibly corny dialog could be amusing if delivered with a properly light and quirky touch by a good actor, and there's a lot of scope for really interesting cinematography. It's mostly just the prose style that seems to be, well, not quite ready for prime time yet. show less

An interesting book.

Worth reading because the style, though it ought not to work, does and the writing is engaging and enjoyable.

The storyline could be reworked and slimmed down but it remains readable throughout.

Worth the read and I don't feel even remotely like there were better uses of my time, the best thing one can think on finishing a book!

Professor Random loses Alice from Alice in Wonderland and sends Henry Witherspoon into Edgeland (between the turn of one page and the start of the next) on a quest to retrieve her. Henry joins up with doodle witch Winnie Flapjack and they travel a long and twisted road, facing many challenges, trying to find Alice and get her back into her book.

There was the germ of a good plot, some humour, and the two main characters, Henry and Winnie, were likeable. I enjoyed spotting the classical and pop culture allusions (find Muses, various gods, the energizer bunny and the Beatles, just to name a few).

However, there were so many characters, jokes, puns, and so many stops and digressions during the quest that the story became rambling and show more disjointed and the ending was anticlimatic when it finally arrived. Most of the prologue made no sense at all (funny as it was, what was all that stuff about haunted stately homes for?) and as for the bonus deleted scene tacked on the end - well, the author was quite right that it would have held up the story far too much.

The book could have used more editing to tighten it up and weed out some of the incongruities and errors. For example, the author calls turtles crustaceans instead of chelonians, uses "could care less" when I think she should have used "couldn't care less" (sorry-pet peeve of mine), yoinks instead of yonks, one of the chess pieces has a shaved tattooed head AND rough green hair. I could go on, but you get the picture. She never met an adjective she didn't like and I had to look up some of the colours she mentions to know what they were. Actually, I had to look up quite a few things, which is not necessarily bad, but it interfered with the suspension of disbelief every time I tripped on something that didn't seem to fit. It felt like the author was an American trying to write British idioms and it didn't work for me.

On the whole, not my cup of tea, and I'll be passing it on in the hope that it will find a reader who will love it.

Book received through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. show less

Random Magic is just that: Randomagical – and definitely for the whimsiest of minds! At first I hesitated to continue reading as Chapter 1 seemed like a whole lot of randomness that I was entirely unprepared for – but by the time Henry and Winnie meet in Chapter 3, I settle in quite nicely into this bizarre world that somehow makes sense in its nonsense. I always enjoy a good play on words and ideas – and Random Magic definitely has a party with them! There is quite the colorful cast of epic proportions – and I’m fairly certain that everyone can find one or two or all characters to love!

I definitely loved Garden of Nine Muses where we get to meet the Muses who are rather ridiculous, but adorably so if you are a die-hard fan of show more the Muses (which I am). The random story about naming mix-up between Erato and Errata was awesome - it makes me giggle each time I stop and think about it!

If you love MirrorMask or appreciate the beauty in random, then Random Magic may be the right book to whisk you away to a world that makes the Mad Hatter look average! show less

Plot:
It just has to be read, but I can give it a try. Alice in Wonderland has gone missing, and Henry Whiterspoon is sent to find her. In a strange land he encounters a young doodle witch named Winnie, gods, demigods, floating cities, and all kinds of weird things.

My thoughts:
By now you have noticed that this is one strange book. Think Alice in Wonderland meets The Hitchhikers' guide to the and whatever other book that is filled with humour and nonsense.

I enjoyed this book because it was just so strange, not too strange, but come on, Alice in Wonderland with mad hatters and bunnies. You know how strange books can be. Here the world seems new, it's not Wonderland, except it is. But we meet a bunch of new characters, the Nine Muses, and show more one is drunk while another is being chased by Eros. The big bad wolf, Thor, Baba Yaga, vampires, and we get to hear that Hades has lost control over a part of the underworld and that is now a casino.

With many books you can figure out what is going to happen, but with this one, just try because you will fail. New strange adventures are always around the next corner. New fun things waiting to happen, dangers to avoid and Alice to find.

The book is amusing and utterly silly. You can't miss the beginning and the quotes from reviews, those are hilarious and written by the author. Every chapter has this little box about what is gonna happen and I do think those were the best part of the book. I would like to go into the author's mind and see how she thinks. How did she write this funny, illogical, and fantastical book?

Recommendation and final thoughts:
It is not for those that want to walk the straight line in literature. It is the book for those who enjoy the silly, the strange, the weird, the fantastical and just a good adventure. And she is such a good writer and the way she plays with words, oh that brain of hers. show less